10 June, 2016

UN chief admits he removed Saudi Arabia from child-killer list due to extortion!

U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon publicly acknowledged Thursday that he
removed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition currently bombing Yemen from a
blacklist of child killers —72 hours after it was published — due
to a financial threat to de-fund United Nations programs.

The
secretary general didn’t name the source of the threat, but news
reports have indicated it came directly from the Saudi government.

The U.N.’s
2015 “Children and Armed Conflict” report originally listed the
Saudi-led coalition in Yemen under “parties that kill or maim
children,” and “parties that engage in attacks on schools
and/or hospitals.” The report, which was based on the work of
U.N. researchers in Yemen, attributed 60 percent of the 785 children
killed and 1,168 injured to the bombing coalition.

After loud
public objections from the Saudi government, Ban said on Monday that
he was revising the report to “review jointly the cases and
numbers cited in the text,” in order to “reflect the
highest standards of accuracy possible.” But on Thursday, he
described his real motivation. “The report describes horrors no
child should have to face,” Ban said at a press conference. “At
the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that
millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was
suggested to me, countries would de-fund many UN programs. Children
already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and so many
other places would fall further into despair.”